Week 2 Flashcards
Describe the Ottoman rulers
The Ottomans were ruled by Sultans, political and military leaders who considered themselves successors to Byzantine and Seljuk Turk emperors.
One example is Suleiman I, who ruled from 1520 to 1566 and extended the Ottoman dominion to its widest geographical extent. Under him, the Ottoman political system reached its classic form, where authority flowed from the sultan to his public servants, which included provincial governors, police officers, military generals, heads of treasuries and viziers.
A distinctive feature of the sultans’ rule was their failure to marry. From 1500 onwards, they did not contract legal marriages but continued the ruling house through concubinage as a slave concubine could not expect to exert power like a noblewoman. Slave concubinage paralleled the Ottoman development of slave soldiers and slave viziers. All held positions entirely at the sultan’s pleasure, owed loyalty solely to him, and were thus more reliable than a hereditary nobility. Great social prestige and the opportunity to acquire power and wealth were attached to being a slave of the imperial household.
Succession to the throne was open to all the sultan’s sons; fratricide often resulted in the Sultans’ death, and the losers were blinded or executed.
Describe the role of religion in the Ottoman Empire
Within the Ottoman Empire, there was religious freedom and semi-tolerance. The Ottomans built their empire by absorbing the Muslims of Anatolia and becoming the protectors of the orthodox church and the millions of Greek Christians in Anatolia and the Balkans. The head of the religious establishment was given the task of reconciling sultanic law with Islamic law, as the main religion was Sunni Islam. This contrasted with Safavid Persia, which was Shi’a, so in the 16th and 17th centuries, there was an exhausting conflict between the two.
Drawing on Quranic teachings, Muslims had long practiced a religious tolerance unknown in Christian Europe. Muslim rulers for the most part guaranteed the lives and property of Christians and Jews in exchange for their promise of obedience and the payment of a poll tax. In the case of the Ottomans, this tolerance was extended not only to the Christians and Jews who had been living under Muslim rule for centuries but also to the Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, and other Orthodox Christians in the newly conquered Balkans. In 1454 Rabbi Isaac Sarfati sent a letter to the Jews in the Rhineland, Swabia, Moravia, and Hungary, urging them to move to Turkey because of the favorable treatment there. A massive migration to Ottoman lands followed.
When Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain expelled the Jews in 1492 and later, many migrated to the Ottoman Empire.
Describe the administration in the Ottoman Empire
All authority flowed from the sultan to his public servants: provincial governors, police officers, military generals, heads of treasuries, and viziers.
Suleiman ordered Lutfi Pasa, a poet and juridical scholar of slave origin, to draw up a new general code of laws that prescribed penalties for routine criminal acts such as robbery, adultery, and murder. It also sought to reform bureaucratic and financial corruption, such as foreign merchants’ payment of bribes to avoid customs duties, imprisonment without trial, and promotion in the provincial administration because of favouritism rather than ability. The legal code also introduced the idea of balanced government budgets.
The Ottomans ruled their more distant lands, such as those in North Africa, relatively lightly. Governors of distant provinces collected taxes and maintained trade routes, but their control did not penetrate deeply into the countryside.
The Ottoman central government maintained power through the strategic use of slavery, particularly through methods such as capturing slaves in battle, purchasing them from various regions, including Spain, North Africa, and Venice, and through the devshirme system. Devshirme involved compelling Christian families in the Balkans to sell their sons, who would then be converted to Islam and trained for civil service and the army.
The brightest among these slaves, roughly 10%, underwent education in subjects like Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian, preparing them for administrative roles. Others were toughened through physical labour on Turkish farms, priming them for military service as janissaries. This elite army corps was fiercely loyal to the sultan and adept with firearms.
This system facilitated merit-based recruitment for both military and administrative positions while also serving as a means of assimilating Christians within Ottoman territories. The ruling class in the Ottoman Empire was composed of individuals of diverse ethnic backgrounds who climbed the ranks through bureaucratic and military service, often starting as slaves of the sultan.
In exchange for their loyalty and service, these individuals were granted landed estates for their lifetime, as all property ultimately belonged to the sultan. Unlike European feudalism, there was no hereditary nobility or private ownership of agricultural land, thus distinguishing the Ottoman system from its European counterparts.
Describe the army of the Ottomans
90% of the boys in the devshirme system became soldiers. They were sent to Turkish farms, where they acquired physical toughness in preparation for military service. They formed the elite army corps. These troops were outfitted with guns and artillery and trained to use them effectively.
In 1514, under the leadership of Selim, the Ottomans turned the Safavids back from Anatolia. The soldiers acquired Syria, Palestine, and Egypt and gained control of the holy cities of Islam. Before long, the Ottomans extended their rule across North Africa to Tunisia and Algeria.
Gunpowder allowed the army to gain control of shipping in the eastern Mediterranean and eliminate the Portuguese from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Suleiman’s army crushed the Hungarians at Mohacs in 1526, killing the king and thousands of his nobles. Three years later, the Turks unsuccessfully besieged the Habsburg capital of Vienna.
Ottomans did not enjoy complete dominion on the seas. Competition with the Habsburgs and pirates for control of the Mediterranean led the Ottomans to conquer Cyprus in 1570 and settle thousands of Turks from Anatolia there. In response, Pope Pius V organised a Holy League against the Turks, which won a victory in 1571 at Lepanto off the west coast of Greece with a squadron of more than two hundred Spanish, Venetian, and papal galleys. Still, the Turks remained supreme on land and quickly rebuilt their entire fleet.
Describe the Safavid Rulers
The Safavid Rulers referred to as Shahs, began in 1501 when 14-year-old Isma’il led the Turkish army to capture Tabriz and declared himself Shah after Turkish Lords ruled Persia. Another example of a shah is Abbas, who moved the capital from Qazin to Isfahan. He is regarded as one of the greatest Shah’s
Describe the role of religion in the Safavid Empire
One source of the Safavid strength was the Shi’a faith, which became the compulsory religion of the empire. The Shi’a believed that leadership among Muslims rightfully belonged to the Prophet Muhammad’s descendants. Because Isma’il claimed descent from a line of twelve infallible imams (leaders) beginning with Ali (Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law), he was officially regarded as their representative on earth. Isma’il recruited Shi’a scholars to instruct and guide his people. He persecuted and exiled Sunni ulama (religious scholars who interpret the Qur’an and the Sunna, the deeds and sayings of Muhammad). To this day, Iran remains the only Muslim state in which Shi’ism is the official religion.
Describe the administration of the Safavid empire
The Safavid state utilized the skills of urban bureaucrats and made them an essential part of the civil machinery of government.
Describe the army of the Safavid Empire
The Safavids secured the loyalty and military support of nomadic Turkish Sufis known as the ‘Qizilbash’ (redheads—because they wore red hats). In return for vast grazing lands, the Qizilbash supplied the shah with troops. In the military realm, Shah Abbas adopted the Ottoman practice of building an army of slaves, primarily captives from the Caucasus. He used them as a counterweight to the Qizilbash, who had come to be considered a threat. He also increased the use of gunpowder weapons and made alliances with European powers against the Ottomans and Portuguese. In his campaigns against the Ottomans, Shah Abbas captured Baghdad, Mosul, and Diarbakr in Mesopotamia. Conflict between the Ottomans and the Safavids was not an even match. The Safavids did not have as many people or as much wealth as the Ottomans and had to defend themselves against encroachments on their western border. Still, they were able to attract some of the Turks in Ottoman lands who felt that their government had shifted too far from its nomadic roots. After Shah Abbas, Safavid power was sapped by civil war between tribal factions vying for control of the court.
Describe the Mughal Rulers
The first Emperor of the Mughal Empire was Babur, a Turkish ruler forced out of a small territory in Central Asia, who captured Kabul and established a kingdom in Afghanistan. An adventurer who claimed descent from Chinggis Khan and Timur, Babur moved southward in search of resources to restore his fortunes. In 1526, with a force of only twelve thousand men equipped with firearms, Babur defeated the sultan of Delhi at Panipat. Babur’s capture of the cities of Agra and Delhi, key fortresses of the north, paved the way for further conquests in northern India. Although many of his soldiers wished to return north with their spoils, Babur decided to stay in India. He wrote an autobiography on his military campaigns.
During the reign of Babur’s son Humayun (r. 1530-1540 and 1555-1556), the Mughals lost most of their territories in Afghanistan. Humayun went into temporary exile in Persia, where he developed a deep appreciation for Persian art and literature.
The reign of Humayun’s son Akbar (r. 1556-1605) may well have been the greatest in the history of India. A boy of thirteen when he succeeded to the throne, Akbar pursued expansionist policies. Under his dynamic leadership, the Mughal state took definitive form and encompassed most of the subcontinent north of the Godavari River. No kingdom or coalition of kingdoms could long resist Akbar’s armies. The once-independent states of northern India were forced into a centralized political system under the sole authority of the Mughal emperor. Akbar replaced Turkish with Persian as the official language
Akbar’s descendants extended the Mughal Empire further. His son Jahangir (r. 1605-1628) consolidated Mughal rule in Bengal.
Jahangir’s son Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658) launched fresh territorial expansion.
Shah Jahan’s son Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707), unwilling to wait for his father to die, deposed him and confined him for years in a small cell.
Describe the role of religion in the Mughal Empire
At the beginning, Akbar used the services of royal princes, nobles, and warrior-aristocrats. Initially
these men were Muslims from Central Asia, but to reduce their influence, Akbar
vigorously recruited Persians and Hindus. No single ethnic or religious faction could
challenge the emperor. Shows it was heterogeneous and tolerant.
At the end, Aurangzeb A puritanically devout and strictly orthodox Muslim, as well as a skillful general and a clever diplomat, ruled more of India than did any previous Mughal emperor, having extended the realm deeper into south India. His reign, however, also marked the beginning of the empire’s decline. His non-Muslim subjects were not pleased with his religious zealotry.
Describe the administration of the Mughal Empire
kbar replaced Turkish with Persian as the official language of the Mughal
Empire, and Persian remained the official language until the British replaced it with
English in 1835. To govern this vast region, Akbar developed an administrative
bureaucracy centered on four co-equal ministers: finance; the army and intelligence; the judiciary and religious patronage; and the imperial household, whose jurisdiction included roads, bridges, and infrastructure throughout the empire. Under Akbar’s Hindu finance minister, Raja Todar Mal, a uniform system of taxes was put in place.
In the provinces imperial governors were appointed by and responsible solely to the
emperor. Whereas the Ottoman sultans and Safavid shahs made extensive use of
slaves acquired from non-Muslim lands for military and administrative positions,
Akbar used the services of royal princes, nobles, and warrior-aristocrats. Initially
these men were Muslims from Central Asia, but to reduce their influence, Akbar
vigorously recruited Persians and Hindus. No single ethnic or religious faction could
challenge the emperor.
The once-independent states of northern India were forced into a centralized political
system under the sole authority of the Mughal emperor.
Describe the army of the Mughal empire
1526 with force of 12 thousand men equipped with firearms, Babur defeated the sultan of Delhi at Panipat. Got loads more conquests but chose to stay in India.
His son Humayun - lost most of their territories in Afghanistan. Then he went into temporary exile in Persia
Then his son Akbar - potentially the greatest in the history of India. when he succeeded the throne. Pursued expansionist politics. The empire took a new definitive form + got most of the subcontinent north of the Godavari River. No one could resist his armies.
Jahangir’s son Shah Jahan
(r. 1628-1658) launched fresh territorial expansion. Faced with dangerous revolts by
the Muslims in Ahmadnagar and the resistance of the newly arrived Portuguese in Bengal, Shah Jahan not only crushed this opposition but also strengthened his northwestern frontier.
Examples of the Islamic empires being tolerant
Ottomans became the protector of the orthodox church
Qu’ran teaches tolerance not shown in Europe
When Isabella and Ferdinand expelled Jews in 1492, lots immigrated to Ottoman Empire
Akbar married Hindu Princesses
Sectarian conflicts within Islam were not as pronounced in Mughal lands, perhaps because Muslims were greatly outnumbered by non-Muslims, mostly Hindus.
Safavid authorities made efforts to convert Armenian Christians in the Caucasus, and many seem to have embraced Islam, some more voluntarily than others. Nevertheless, the Armenian Christian Church retained its vitality, and under the Safavids, Armenian Christians were prominent merchants in long-distance trade.
Examples of the Islamic empires not being tolerant
Safavid empire persecuted + exiled Sunni ulama.
The Sunni-Shi’a split between the Ottomans and Safavids led to efforts to define and enforce religious orthodoxy on both sides.
For the Safavids this entailed suppressing Sufi movements and Sunnis, even marginalizing — sometimes massacring — the original Qizilbash warriors, who had come to be seen as politically disruptive.
Aurangzeb was less tolerant than Akbar. He forbade sat, enforced Islamic laws against gambling, prostitution, and drinking, ordered the destruction of some Hindu temples and tried to curb Sikhism. Hindus had to pay higher customs duties than Muslims, but all of this proved unpopular and aroused resistance that weakened Mughal rule
How tolerant is Europe towards religion?
Clashes between Catholics and Protestants
